To think pavement parking should be banned

[HoustonBess]

There's a government inquiry into pavement parking, you can submit comments here

www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/transport-committee/inquiries/parliament-2017/pavement-parking-17-19/

I absolutely hate pavement parking - it's someone thinking their car not being scratched is more important than me and DD's lives. I live in an area of terraced streets and especially on bin days, you basically can't go out with a pram because it's so bad.

Anyone else want to comment for the inquiry? Maybe mumsnet could submit something on behalf of lots of people?

Obviously I can’t speak for others but I know in my case people don’t need to drive to the overground station, but they do for convenience, in turn making things massively inconvenient (and unsafe) for me and my minded children.

I can’t wait for the permit parking to come into place, because walking along the pavement as opposed to going on the road to avoid motorbikes and cyclists zooming on the path, seems like a luxury right now!

People who want a blanket ban are also disproportionately affecting the less well off. More expensive housing tends to come with off street parking.

There is nowhere else to park where I live - the council has painted bays on the pavement and you are expected to use them. There are no car parks (unless we go into the bigger town which is about 6 miles away and 2 buses). We live in an entirely residential area - no shops with or without car parks, no sports centre, nowhere else to park that isn't in the street laid out exactly as ours is. What do you expect people to do?

Just think of the knock on effects of that - how do people travel to work if they have to travel long distances or start before public transport runs? How do people get to banks and post offices? Our nearest are in the town 6 miles away. 2 buses at £2.50 each so that would cost me £10 to just get to the post office and back and would take me over an hour. My drs is 2 bus rides away - in distance it isn't that far from my house, probably 2 miles, but there are no direct buses so I have to go out and then back in again so another £10 in fares to get to the dr.

Either councils need to spend money providing viable alternatives or we have to accept that in some places they will have to permit cars to park on the pavements.

Or people have to accept a lower quality of life due to the choices they make. If this means they have to live in a cheaper area to afford a car, or have to have a longer commute via public transport, walking or cycling then it may well come to that.

The way we live at present isn't sustainable, there isn't enough land or resources to build roads and sufficient off street parking to cater for the demand. There are choices to be made and some of us are going to be in a worse state than we are used to because we have benefitted historically, and unfairly.

Or people have to accept a lower quality of life due to the choices they make. If this means they have to live in a cheaper area to afford a car, or have to have a longer commute via public transport, walking or cycling then it may well come to that.

Then we have to re think society. People on just above minimum wage can't afford thousands of pounds a year train fares. As I've just pointed out, a round trip to my drs or bank or post office will cost me £10. To the supermarket is £5 return except that I can't carry the shopping or walk to the bus stop!

To say people need to make different choices presumes people had a choice to make in the first place. If we really want people to give up cars then make public transport free and running 24 hours a day. That would be a huge start.

Or people have to accept a lower quality of life due to the choices they make. If this means they have to live in a cheaper area to afford a car, or have to have a longer commute via public transport, walking or cycling then it may well come to that.

Yes... Allow only people who have enough money to afford a drive to own cars🙄
Fucking hell. Screw families, tradesmen, people in areas with crap public transport. 🙄

I live in a London borough with roads so narrow, you have to park on the pavement

No. No-one HAS to park on the pavement. Pavements are designed for people. Sorry if it inconveniences drivers but that's just a consequence of owning a car. You don't get to have your non-existent 'right' trump the rights of pedestrians.

And oddly, we find the same people getting worked up about people riding bikes on pavements also defending the 'right' to park their cars on the same pavements...

Posters who say just park elsewhere have clearly never set foot in any of our northern towns and cities where there are rows and rows of Victorian terraced houses on narrow streets with nowhere else to park for a couple of miles, and without the public transport infrastructure that they clearly enjoy in their home town.

“Anyone who disagrees with me must live in London” is a weird MN thing.

The proposed ban on pavement parking in Scotland (not law yet but currently going through Parliament) is a ‘blanket ban’ in the sense that it’s a national-level ban on pavement parking, but local authorities will be allowed to exempt specific streets under specific conditions. We don’t have back-to-back Victorian terraces in the same way but we do have back-to-back Victorian tenements with similar issues.

We clearly need to improve public transport infrastructure for everybody, but it’s not reasonable to assume that drivers should be entitled to block narrow pavements and prevent pedestrians from using them in the meantime. What’s a wheelchair user without a car supposed to do, just stay in the house for the foreseeable future?

As someone partially sighted and with young children I definitely think it should be banned.

How on Earth am I supposed to get the kids past safely when they take up the whole pavement? I have to walk them into the road which isn't safe anyway but also isn't helpful when you're telling your children to stick to the pavement.

My husband has a guide dog and this makes travelling so difficult. Personally if my cane/child's bag accidentally scrapes your car it's your own fault for lazy parking.

Or people have to accept a lower quality of life due to the choices they make. If this means they have to live in a cheaper area to afford a car, or have to have a longer commute via public transport, walking or cycling then it may well come to that.

I already live in a dirt cheap area. Which is a small, rural town with no jobs, no cinema and very few shops because all the bigger areas around here are completely out of our price range. Public transport is non-existent here. There is a train station, but that doesn't help because the trains don't go to where I need to go. There are no buses. The trains that DO run, don't run on Sundays. Or Bank Holidays. Or very often at all in the winter months.

People around here work, for the most part, in jobs that are at least 30-40 minutes drive away - pretty much all of this occurs on rural roads with no pavements, no cycle lanes and no street lights. This is rural Cumbria. Outside the tourist hot spots (which incidentally, means locals can rarely afford to buy in the main tourist areas due to holiday homes) public transport simply doesn't exist - or if it does, it's way out of the price range for a local who works in tourism/hospitality on minimum wage.

All the people who work in the shops, bars, cafes, tourist attractions need to live somewhere! But those jobs rarely pay more than minimum wage - so how can they afford all these non existent houses with off-road parking? Or mortgages on houses that cost 300k+ a year?

Blanket bans simply will not work because huge parts of the country do not live like London or other big cities do. Public transport doesn't exist, cycling across rural roads in winter is a death wish - people need cars.

We clearly need to improve public transport infrastructure for everybody, but it’s not reasonable to assume that drivers should be entitled to block narrow pavements and prevent pedestrians from using them in the meantime. What’s a wheelchair user without a car supposed to do, just stay in the house for the foreseeable future?

But you're assuming that everyone who parks on the pavement is doing so in a way that it blocks people from using said pavement. Like PP we have to park on the pavements here - the council ask us to do so (on one side of the road, on the other you park fully on the road) - this is to allow cars, bin wagons and emergency vehicles to be able to pass safely at all times). But people can still get past on the pavement - and that includes wheelchairs, double pushchairs etc.

No. No-one HAS to park on the pavement

Actually I’m going to be facetious here but actually I do because I own it Rare I’ll acknowledge but there’s plenty of other such anomalies in the weird and wonderful world of boundaries.

Just to add though. By my guests/me (and my neighbours doing the same) parking up on our land, it means the other side park their cars fully in the road.

There is a fully, unblocked stretch of pavement on the other side of the road, and I can categorically state nobody would use the “pavement” in front of our houses anyway.

Perhaps all of us who rely on cars should just stay home? Then the few with access to off street parking or who have full mobility or can afford and access public transport can increase their taxes to pay for us to sit at home and stay off the roads?

So no trades people to do your electrics, plumbing, phones, decorating unless they have big enough drives for their vans, less tax revenue from road tax, car park fees, tolls etc, way less people in work. But the roads will be quiet and no cars on the pavement.

YANBU.
As a wheelchair user I get completely stuck sometimes when this happens and there are no dropped kerbs so I can go another way.

My road was built with a drive and a garage each house and every flat has 2 parking spaces. There are visitor spaces but now only for use of the flats despite being told when we bought the new builds they were for house use as well. We get parking ticket if we try to use them.

Houses in our road

over the road has 3 family cars and a flat bed truck and a van for 3 adults

next door
2 cars and 2 white vans

Bothe these neighbours have a single car drive , although next door does manage to squeeze 2 cars on it

Our house we have 3 cars on drive

New neighbour
a huge white van, car and a huge cement mixer which goes on drive. The car and van he parks on the pavement opposite each other and manages to block the road as well the other day because he had his van door open and refused to close it to let us past. From what we can gather we cant do much about it.

Most of the flat parking is empty, but they have had to take action because people park on the parking spaces either to go to the station or to use the nursery.

Thankfully garages no longer count as parking space, and a new development has been refused planning permission partly because of lack of parking in the development and garages didnt count as adequate parking

Well if London with the best transport in the whole country can’t cope without cars the rest of us are surely doomed.

Whoops, sorry for posting and running, interesting to see all the comments!

I think part of what drives me crazy is the lack of clarity. There's a fudge where parking on the pavement is not illegal but not really right either. I wonder if there should be a process of reviewing every street over a few decades and working out what there really is space for.

Like pavements should be x width and the space for a car to get along the street is y, you need z for car parking as well and there either is or is not enough space for that. End the fudge where cars just prop a couple of wheels up on the kerb.

You could decide for each street whether you would only allow parking on one side of the street, or remove/narrow one pavement to allow for more parking.

IMHO a lot of the problem is that car drivers feel entitled to park directly outside their houses, it wouldn't kill them/us to walk a short distance from a parking spot with enough room.

Well if London with the best transport in the whole country can’t cope without cars the rest of us are surely doomed

Exactly. And central London has the congestion charge, massive parking difficulties and is grid locked for most of the day. Do you not think if there were viable alternatives that people wouldn't be using them and instead choose to pay over £10/day congestion zone, plus the emissions charge now, plus parking at ridiculous rates and crawl along slower than walking pace just for fun?

Thing is, though, if someone does park so it's hard for me to get pat and there are no dropped kerbs I will try to get past.

So far those people have been lucky and not had their cars scratched. I'll always try not to. But I'm not missing an appointment because of someone else's selfishness.

I just wish some motorists were a little bit more considerate where pavement parking is concerned. Yes, you need to park somewhere, but would it hurt to make sure that you're not parked in a way that is putting other people in danger.

I'm all for it. I live in a small northern village and its a nightmare trying to squeeze past cars that have parked so close to the garden fences that I have no choice to take my toddler on the road where stupid yobs fly down the road going well over the speed limit.
What makes this more annoying is that most of the houses have a drive way but people Just don't use them out of sheer lazyness.
I'm sick of the "I'm fine thanks" attitude of some people.
I think a lwas stating that you have to park on your drive if you have one would really help things in some areas

End the fudge where cars just prop a couple of wheels up on the kerb

Why, when in some places it really is the best solution?

I just wish some motorists were a little bit more considerate where pavement parking is concerned

Trouble is....driving a car seems to trump all other considerations - cost, pollution, accidents,......and ALL other road and pavement users.

It's the entitlement that society confers.

Trouble is....driving a car seems to trump all other considerations - cost, pollution, accidents,......and ALL other road and pavement users.

Trouble is where i live I have 3 train stations within walking distance, access to oyster into London. There is a bit of cut off line with the buses because of TFl

But if my DS and DH want to go to work, it is a 25 minute drive, using public transport it would take 2 hours+, also took me 2 hours to get to hospital appointment, again around a 25 minute drive.
They often car share but if DS is seeing gf then he has to take his car.

Stop complaining everyone car manufacturers have to make as much money as possible, therefore we must all have huge cars, at least 2 each